Heir to Halla
by Zeoniu Zekial Kal Leos
Summary: Halla is nearing ruin. The war has been lost. Is it too late for one Traveler to right the wrongs and change it all now? PERMANENT HIATUS AS OF 6/22/13.
1. Authors Note

Authors note prior to the actual chapters. When I posted this up at forums, things seemed a little confusing, so I'm going to give the same back-info at the start _here_ that I did after I had posted the first chapter _there._

I'm pretty much taking the origins of the Travelers, the true nature of Halla and the Territory's and changing them as needed for the story. The true origin and such didn't really seem as satisfactory to me, though they were certainly unique.

A little additional info is that the Travelers never once won a turning point. They always failed. Saint Dane had Nevva Winter working with him from the start to upset the balance even further. Otherwise most of the events still took place, they just botched the victory in the end, and Nevvas presence wasn't known until Quillan.

The other Travelers died off along the way until it was just Bobby at the end. This story picks up where Raven Rises massive flume consumes the helicopter with Bobby, Saint Dane, and Nevva.


	2. Chapter 1

**JOURNAL #42**

For the last four years of my life, I had struggled to protect the ten territories of Halla against a violent turning point being constantly pushed forward by the demon Saint Dane. Each and every time I thought victory was at hand, some random point I didn't take into consideration was unveiled that led victory into a devastating defeat.

The final breaking point came when Second Earth was lost. The tenth and final territory had succumbed to Saint Danes workings and the barrier of reality that separated them all collapsed in on itself, allowing his 'Convergence' to take place at last.

The once-apart territory's of Halla swiftly bled into one another to create a chaotic world under Saint Danes control to shape however he pleased. It was over. The other Travelers and myself had failed. Halla had crumbled into ruin.

_Or so I thought._

My name is Bobby Pendragon, so-called Lead Traveler, and this is the start of my forty-second journal. The other forty-one documented the efforts put into saving the ten territories separately. This journal will document my efforts to save Halla in and of itself.

---

A lot has occurred since the massive flume on Second Earth consumed myself, Saint Dane, and Nevva Winters. I didn't know what happened to them, but I wound up falling for an eternity through an empty, blank white space. No sounds, no images, no stars and no planets. A never-ending stretch of nothingness.

That gave me enough time to consider what I had done, and what had gone so very wrong this time. Yet again I was played like a violin between Saint Dane and Nevva Winter into thinking I was on the right path, despite my paranoia of knowing they might be doing just that anyway.

It sickened me to realize that no matter what, I was always ten steps behind. How was it possible that they could always come out at any point in the history of a territory, while the Travelers always turned up at set, specific times? It was as though Halla itself was fighting against our efforts.

As it turns out, that wasn't far off. I've heard 'Halla itself' described to me as all that ever was, or to be. That's more a vague, little kid kind of answer, but for the longest time that was all I needed to know.

The truth is that 'Halla itself' is the known multiverse. Every decision that was ever made, thought of, or could have been branched off and split the universe in two from the very first sentient creature in existence on every territory to create a sort of universal-forest, if you will. Every action was a single branch, every thought a leaf, and every person a piece of the larger tree itself, with the roots belonging to the territory in question.

There were in total eleven territories before the 'Convergence', ten of which are well known: Cloral, Denduron, First, Second, and Third Earth's, Eelong, Ibara, Quillan, Veelox, and Zadaa. The eleventh is unique. Consider it the soil, the ground, the planet to which the other territories grew out of.

Its name is Eionia, and despite its importance to Halla, the territory isn't massive by any scale. It's hardly any larger than a small city, but the location is what makes it so valuable. Eionia exists in both the top most and bottom most dimensions, stretching like a sphere around all of creation and keeping it in.

If anything exists outside of that sphere, I wouldn't know. Heck, I don't want to know. This information is mind-numbing enough as it is without trying to consider omniversal-scales. If Halla is just one multiverse, whats on the other side? How many other multiverses are there?

_Ugh_. That kind of thought process is enough to give your brain a meltdown. But my point is that Eionia is something like the foundation for all the other territories. Without it, none of them could exist in the first place. Which is why it took the merging of the other ten into one before the path to Eionia could even be discovered.

As I was saying, I fell for an eternity. I fell for so long I allowed my thoughts to drift back to each journal I had written, one at a time, reciting as much as I could remember. I hit journal number one six times. I never grew hungry, or thirsty, or tired. I just.. _was_. My body wasn't even sore from the tumbles I had taken prior to the flume trip.

I honestly began wondering if I was still trapped in a life-light pyramid on Veelox as Saint Dane manipulated my experience into this state of purgatory. I was really starting to believe in that when a saw a spec of darkness so far in the distance I had to blink a few times and squint just to make sure I wasn't imagining it.

_No_, that was definitely something at the end of the tunnel, and I was pretty sure it wouldn't be more light for once. Once I knew this agonizing flume ride would finally be coming to a close, I started getting antsy waiting for it. And once it was discovered it never seemed to grow any closer.

It took me what felt like two more months before the spec grew to the size of a marble. Another several to a baseball. Somewhere between one to five years after that before it evened out to a small cave entry and the trip came to a violent halt as I was pitched forward from white space into murky darkness.

_/pause Journal #42_


	3. Chapter 2

**Journal #42 - Continued**

I was thrown forward head over feet a few times before my body hit the darkness. At the time I didn't know what to expect, though I had a faint concern that it was the actual 'space' I had seen outside of so many flume trips before. Though that worry didn't pan out, it wasn't far off.

The substance is hard to describe. One moment it was mildly warm, the next slightly frosty. It felt like it was in a constant state of shifting, going from semi-solid to partially-liquid like in an instant. My body was engulfed by it and at several points I could feel various temperatures and resistances rolling across it.

I shivered at the unnatural feeling and tried to get a bearing for where I was. I couldn't really see in this murk but I also realized that I couldn't breath either. Panic briefly rose up before another comprehension dawned; my body didn't seem to require oxygen anymore.

That, more than anything else, just about confirmed what Saint Dane had once taunted me with a couple of territories ago, stating that the Travelers were nothing more than illusions. Right then and there I can honestly say I believed him.

I had lost any need of hunger, thirst, weariness, and now air. I truly wasn't _human_.

Not the best thing to realize and understand about yourself, especially in the middle of existence. Essentially the substance I was in turned out to be the dimensional matter that kept the eleven territories of Halla separated from one another. It had been broken down in the 'Convergence' from a constant solid barrier into this fluctuating state of weakness.

The fact that it was still trying to reform into its original state would later help me understand that the battle for Halla was still underway, that things weren't over despite our... really _my own_, failures.

But I didn't know any of that yet. As I said, I couldn't see in this gunk. It was only by pure chance that in my flailing efforts to get moving my Traveler Ring got close enough for me to see the ten symbols etched around the stone in the middle were glowing brightly.

I knew the stone would glow whenever I was near a flume, but the symbols? What the heck? I wondered if it was another change in Halla, but tried to follow it anyway. If the same effect was taking place here that usually happened with the ring, I just might be getting out of this murk and perhaps find a way back to what the territory's had melded into.

As it happens, I was able to push-swim my way forward for a few hours using my ring like a compass to guide me. It's a good thing I couldn't get fatigued because I'm pretty sure I should have been feeling exhausted from non-stop motion by the time I was done.

The shine from my ring grew enough that even a foot away I could see it in the darkness around me. Soon enough my hands broke free into open air, but before my head could reach I felt something grab onto them and yank me forward sharply.

I yelped in surprise at both the unexpected movement and the sudden numbness that shot down both hands straight into my shoulders. When my body cleared the substance I was dropped to the ground- and not softly either, thank you very much.

Who, or whatever it was, paced around behind me before I could get a good look at them. I couldn't really get a good look at anything after all that time in the dark, and it was pretty bright where I had turned up. I squinted and turned my head around to follow the thing to pull me out- I couldn't be sure if it was human or not because the moment contact was made my fingers lost all sensitivity.

I got a glimpse of dark gray boots on a dark gray rocky surface. Well, that rules out klees or quigs. I hoped it was a human. I didn't get the chance to find out as whoever it was came back and touched my head. Just one touch, that's all it was, and I was out like a light.

---

I woke up some time later. My eyelids felt like they weighed ten tonnes apiece, so its a wonder I was able to crack one open at all. I was in a dark hut resting on a cot. That information wasn't really helpful. The mystery figure to yank me out stepped back into the otherwise empty hut with their arms behind the back. The lighting wasn't good enough to make out what they looked like or wore.

"Awake at last." the voice was definitely male. Rough and grating, as though it wasn't used often except for shouting, yet spoken in a soft tone that felt just as unnatural to my ears as the substance I had been floating through for the last few hours.

He leaned down and pressed a hand to my still numb right shoulder. A jolt of electricity shot through my entire body from the point of contact and I jumped off the cot, a yelp of pain escaping. The man stood back up straight and gestured for me to walk out ahead of him.

Fine by me. I somewhat spasmodically stepped out of the hut and paused just outside the doorway at the sight around me. Dark gray stretched out as far as I could see in every direction, including up. We seemed to be underground, yet despite that transparent pale blue stars stretched across the ceiling and in some places, even the floor itself!

I felt a low jab in my middle back and jumped forward again with another jolt of electricity. For the first time I got a good look at the man who had pulled me out here.

His features seemed to be carved out of the very rock beneath our feet. His pale silver and transparent hair was long enough to reach his shoulders, while his eyes glowed with a thousand microscopic pinpricks of light that I was sure would be stars, mild blue mixed among the white as though his eyes themselves were mimicking space.

His clothing was jagged and dark gray as well, a flowing robe held open above a suit like those I had seen the Life-light inhabitants wear, yet the runes of the ten normal territory's were etched into it in unique patterns, each glowing vibrantly.

"I know what you wonder. I have no name, but it is I that you owe your life to." he said in the same voice as before. I took a step back as his voice woke me up out of the stupor I had entered looking his form over. "Welcome to the truth behind Halla. Welcome to Eionia."

_/pause Journal #42_


	4. Chapter 3

**Journal #42 - Continued**

The alien word struck a chord in my soul more powerfully than almost any emotion I had ever felt before in my life. My head rocked back, my knees grew weak, and the world span in place several times around me. For the first time the man smiled a fraction of a smile. With a suddenly parched throat and dry mouth, I managed to choke out the word he had spoken, "_Eionia_?" in a far less than elegant tone of voice.

His smile didn't fade, though his eyes and the runes on his outfit took on an unearthly, vibrant magenta glow, bathing his form in varying shades of red and dark pink light. "Yes. _Eionia_-" he spoke the word and paused deliberately to watch as my body reacted to it again, the smile widening briefly, "is what you would call an eleventh territory. But bare no suspicions, this realm is far from any territory you have ever walked before."

With that he proceeded to lay out on me the whole forest-world-of-possibilities thing I wrote down last time. I learned some pretty harsh truths. Of them all, the one I think hurts the most is the one that seemed to have the least relevance to this guy. "You wish to understand Saint Dane? Look upon your reflection in a wavered pool. He is you at your darkest. Your shadow, your antithesis. He is everything _you_ should have become as things were to follow the way they were meant to be."

I shuddered. This wasn't quite what I was expecting, but several years in silence with only yourself for company can make a guy appreciate anyone, even him. "He is the embodiment of the Travelers failures, but _you_ above all are the one responsible for his creation. Without your existence neither would he be left. All changes to Halla would be reborn but for your existence to end." With that pleasant note he turned away from me to look out across the barren plain, a contemplative expression on his face.

"_You_ are _He_, and _He_ is _You_. Remove all other beings in creation and still the two of you would co-exist alone so long as the other was left. You will cease to ensure he succumbs." the simple note of finality in his tone may as well have been a sledgehammer descending upon a small glass sphere. Something at my deepest _shattered_. I _felt_ a piece of my mind, my _essence,_ my very _soul_ splinter away from the mass.

I turned and ralphed, _hard_. Thick black sludge hit the ground before me and writhed beneath the magenta light coming from his form behind me. A low exhalation filled the air as the sludge began to gather and condense, forming together into a small black star like those left behind as the marker of a flume.

A screech of unbridled despair erupted from it in a shock-wave that knocked me flat on my back. I groaned. The black star flickered for a few seconds before morphing into a nasty set of tang-like claws and shooting at the other guy. A simple flick of his hand banished it backwards toward the gunk between the territories I had swam through before. To my surprise It hit it like a solid wall and a wet splat as the star was scattered like buckshot across it.

Suddenly exhausted, burning on the inside where that gunk had come from and left my throat, and in a fair degree of pain and numbness still I couldn't really do much of anything as the remnants of the star reformed and gathered fractions of the wall behind it as well.

It wasn't much more than a couple of grains per piece of star, but when it reformed, a pulsing energy washed through it and the star erupted into a well familiar black smoke. "_No._" I managed to get out. "_Oh, yes._" Filled with the same despair as before, the voice oozed out of a paler skinned, dark haired form looking rather like I did, yet conveying a sense of power I had never commanded.

He took a testing step forward and raised one hand before his face for examining, then clenched it into a fist and shook his head. "The irony is bitterly delectable. The very force you have been trying to destroy was born from your own failures therein." he said scathingly.

His eyes roamed over the area before settling on the other man, and they grew far colder and more distant. "You always knew this would occur, didn't you? Halla could have held peace! Instead you became so caught up in what you invisioned taking place that you forced events to come to pass." his voice conveyed a lot of anger barely under control. "No wonder Press was always so insistent that this was the way it was meant to be; how else could it be without the balance between the forces. The Travelers existed, so of course to make up for it you must have an equal and opposite being to counteract them." he spun in place and wrapped a hand around my own, yanking me up to my feet.

He stared at me hard in the eyes while gesturing to the figure beside us. "Do you realize that you were never meant to stand here in this place? That you need never have suffered and left ten territories in chaos struggling against me? For you time is flowing forward, but for me it is precisely the opposite; all of these encounters to come for me that are still dwelling in your past, do you understand that it all could have been avoided if not for _him_? Free will doesn't exist! It's all a series of manipulations set up to lead you here and create _me! _his voice had begun interrogative, then sunken into desperation and despair toward the end.

"All of the atrocities, all of the lives that have to be destroyed, all because '_That is the way it was meant to be'_?! This is a chess game using all the forces of Halla as pawns, and you and I are the respective queens to travel anywhere across the board while doing the bidding of the limited king!" his voice was starting to take on a harsh edge to it again. Apparently I wasn't looking much better than he was sounding, as something in his eyes sharpened and he took a step back.

"... It's futile. You won't stop it. You _can't_ stop it, not while _he_ still rules over all of Halla. But I _swear to you_, to all of _Halla itself_, that I will wrench control from _him_ and set right the wrongs of creation. Join me, Pendragon, and let us work together instead of against each other- allow me to guide you as I would yet Nevva. Don't let us become desperate enemies _again_!" he ordered, seeming to change his mind every other word spoken.

I looked back and forth between them. If what he was saying was true, and I already knew better than to trust it, but just _if_ it was true... could any of this be avoided? Maybe, and maybe not. I wasn't getting a good vibe from either of them. One way or another, things were going to be trouble. And if I truly had to cease to destroy Saint Dane and everything he had done... what did I have to lose in trying to stop him from the get-go?

I felt the energy suddenly thrumming through the air. "... Yes." my voice nearly cracked.

_/pause Journal #42._


End file.
